


I Drove All Night

by LilacFree



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Post Season 7
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-25
Updated: 2013-03-25
Packaged: 2017-12-06 11:36:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/735210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilacFree/pseuds/LilacFree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look at Sam Winchester, after Dean goes to Purgatory.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>One use of adult language.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Drove All Night

“And then the allosaur says to the velociraptor, I want ice cream.”  
“Eat your vegetables first.”  
“ice cream I SCREAM—“  
“Indoor voice, sweetie. And don’t play with your food, eat it.”

The little boy was not the only one playing with his food. Across the diner from mother and son sat a very tall man. On most days one might have called Sam Winchester a young man, but with his broad shoulders slumped and his face blurred with weariness, he looked older. He drew himself together enough to smile and nod at the waitress when she topped off his coffee, but when she moved away he let it slip.  


Allosaur, brachiosaur, deinonychus. He’d had his dinosaur phase. While his father was busy in sporting goods or automotive department of Wal-Marts , he’d lingered in the toy section yearning after those little plastic figures. What had been his favorite? He’d always looked for a figure of it, never found it… ah, Stygimoloch, with its wonderfully spiky skull. Because of course, doomed Sammy Winchester’s favorite dino would be named after its Hell Creek discovery site. Sam picked at his food. He’d ordered the vegetable plate and hadn’t been surprised when the vegetables on it had been boiled into anonymity. The orange corrugated slabs were certainly carrots, but he wouldn’t have bet on any of the others. He put bite after bite into his mouth, chewing each to mush just to pass the time. He watched the mother and son out of the corner of his eye.  


The kid finally got his ice cream. Good, a happy ending. For now. Maybe they’d go out the door and the kid would get hit by a car. Endings were never happy, not really. An ending meant there were no choices left. Game over, man, game over. No matter how high your score at the end, you lose.  


He found himself on the road again with no real memory of getting back in the car. For all he knew, he had left without paying. Dine and dash was considered a worse crime than grave desecration on a Winchester’s rap sheet. The employees of road-side diners were practically extended family. He always left cash for a tip, if he had cash.  


The highway split and he took the west exit, because it was easiest. Stay to the right, drive just above the speed limit. He knew how to make the Impala just an anonymous shape in the darkness. Driving in the dark, he had nothing to look at but the stripes on the road, nothing to pay attention to except speedometer and fuel gauge. Going forward, until the miles ahead of him became the miles behind him.  


Sometimes, despite his best efforts, he would think. He had slipped out of the Leviathans’ headquarters. The Impala was still drivable. There was no sign of Meg. Dean would be furious, would have been, to find her banged up. The Impala, not Meg.  


Purgatory. Dean really got around. Hell, Heaven, Faerie, Purgatory. The most well-traveled hunter ever. A Winchesterian Odyssey.  


He had driven endlessly like this after the Mystery Spot incident. Sam tried to summon up the rage that had filled him then, the tempest of despair and guilt, but it was as dead inside him as the ashen wings of a slaughtered angel. Maybe Castiel had taken it from him along with the rest of the Lucifer-born madness.  


Another exit coming up.  


He should go see Kevin. Or Garth.  


Yes, do that.  


“Hi, Garth. How’ve you been? Oh, Dean? Dean’s in Purgatory. Yeah, that’s awful. What am I doing about it? Oh, I thought I’d take the exit to Hell, Michigan, then a left turn at Albuquerque.”  
…  
“Fuck.”  


He passed the exit by.  


It started to rain. So he drove more carefully. He didn’t know where to go but he hadn’t run out of road yet.

*~*  
End

**Author's Note:**

> I found it quite believable that Sam wouldn't look for Dean. But I think the show could have handled/presented it better.


End file.
